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dude, i'm sorry, but trying to pass off a 7ft wheeled coffin as containing 1 board was your mistake. as much as we all might want to believe otherwise, those folks are not stupid. i bet if you'd said there were 2, you'd have been fine.
the times i've traveled jetblue & got by paying for 1 board but having 2 i've used a non-wheeled slim-fit bag. even jam-packed & well padded, they've never questioned me. my wheeled coffin ALWAYS attracts extra attention. not always opened, but they look harder at it.

Truth. The times I've got two sticks through for the price of one it was in a day bag.

yankee you're stoked to be in premier seating because doesn't AA charge coach passengers $100/segment for a board? JB is $50 but they don't have biz or first. Just "extra leg room" which is an effing racket.

No, AA still charges the gouge of $100-150 each way. They just tend not to hassle biz/fc fliers by demanding that the bag be opened for review by the fee gestapo. Because the biz/fc passanger could be a bigwig with clout (not me) and they don't want to risk ticking off someone who is a playuh.
Ergo, take 2 or 3 boards.

As you say, the airlines just hose people at every opportunity.

When you think about it, what kind of business model is that, really? Screw your clients with multiple invented fees, provide less product (aka, seating space), demand & receive, in lockstep with your 'competitors,' higher prices, oh, and nail your clients with inflated, exorbitant pricing for the same product every time there's more demand for your product.

If service businesses did this crap to clients, the local consumer affairs office would go batsh!t crazy & there would be articles in the local media about scamming companies. Yet, with the airlines, it's blatant screwing of the clients - - and sanctioned by the feds, too.

Agreed on all fronts. They don't give a damn about the customer. I've had elite status on a handful of different airlines at different points the last few years and even when you're flying with them multiple times per week, they don't treat you any better than the guy flying for the first and only time ever.

Seems that the extra charges are a combo of increasing overhead costs of fuel, etc. plus wanting to sell the customer on the "lowest" base rate possible even when they know they'll need the extras that have a surcharge. Imagine paying for a base model vehicle, then shelling out a few grand the first time you use the power windows and another several hundo when you bump your first jams on the radio.

I was years before flying back then but what was it like in the 80s and 90s when everything was included in one price when you flew and the only flight attendants were female stewardess smoke shows? Sounds utopian to me. Something I'll never know though.

i never brought boards on a plane,always heard about them crazy board fees.im fortunate to have a buddy in cr that lets me use his when I go down.either I borrow a board or 2 or rent one from the nearby shop.depends on where ur goin tho,u don't want to rent boards at pipe,youll break them all.u can always buy used boards once ur down there,im usually good with 2 sticks,if a break or lose one,well I got 1 left.also when u buy a used board in pr or cr,u can get one for 30-50 bucks,not like here where they start off at 300

nj42 that is what I was talking about. They're not as roomy as the coffins and I find that padding can quickly fill the coffin bags. Using the lower profile bag did help to get it past detection of holding two boards, as you said in your post.

Thanks for the suggestion of extra reading help. When you read too much writing that lacks proper capitalization, spelling, grammar or even entire subjects and/or predicates (as we see on here), you start to go blind. Good looks, brah.

Because we were in a back and forth conversation on a thread that had progression and context was fully clear. It's later on Saturday night and even though I'm just kicking it watching this NFL game with brain on auto-pilot after a busy day, I'll be sure to explicitly refer to it each time as a "travel bag that is styled like a day bag" just so you know that I know what bag you are talking about. Did the stenographer get that on the record? We want full transparency here, so that everyone is on the same page. That work for you nj42?

Before you guys go Defcon6 on the day bag thing, I'll relate my experience with day bags & AA. I made the total bonehead move (years ago) of packing a board in a day bag & going to the DR on AA.

Upon retrieval of the bag from monkey, er, baggage claim, the rear quarter of the board was literally gone. Yet, the bag was still zipped up. Go figure. Brought the injured stick to a local DR repair guy. He proceeded to repair the missing chunk. Did an ok job for a guy working in a debris-strewn backyard in Cabarete.

But, he also decided to do me a good turn by scraping off the board wax - - - with a metal blade. The glas was destroyed. He smiled as I paid him, knowing that he had helped yet another dumbass gringo go surfing.

My 2 centavos: go coffin or rent.

Last edited by yankee; Jan 5, 2014 at 03:58 AM.
Reason: the contrails are not moving again, Arch